Crafting Good Item Descriptions: A Guide

Jiraishin

Warning: this guide is so long I had to split it into multiple posts. Read the four questions and explanations below to see if you're interested in reading the rest.

 

WHAT IS THIS?

This is intended as guide to good design practice for clothing, jewellery, and custom artefacts, and as a sort of revision guide for item descriptions in those categories. It is NOT concerned with grammar or the approval process. You can get designs approved while following none of this advice. It is also not about cooking design practices, because I don't think I'm qualified to give advice on that. Also, THERE WILL BE NO DISCUSSION OF COMMAS.

 

DID ANYONE ASK FOR YOUR ADVICE?

No, and I do realize that.

 

WHY DID YOU MAKE THIS?

Because I like wandering around shops and looking at all the cool things people make, and because I think I can be helpful in this regard. I work as an editor IRL, and have been crafting things in Achaea for nearly a decade. It's a learning process. I have a word document which has my designs from the very start, and a lot of them are flat-out terrible. My newer ones are better, but I'm sure I'll look back on them someday and wince.

 

IS THERE A TL;DR?

Sort of/not really. If you're interested in these design tips but your eyes are starting to water considering the sheer length of this guide (mine are, and I wrote the thing), I'd suggest just reading the 'Things to Do' list below and skipping the 'Things to Avoid' section. It's a lot shorter and you'll get -some- of the same things from it. However, I do very strongly recommend reading the Things to Avoid, in installments if necessary. There is a lot of detail in there.

 

So, without further ado...

Jiraishin

THINGS TO DO

 

1. Research. Make sure you know something about what you're describing. If you are tailoring with a specific fabric, research its texture and appearance instead of making assumptions (I've absolutely been guilty of this). If you are designing a journal with a metal cover, find out how such a book would be bound. This can actually be a lot of fun and provide unexpected gems of inspiration.  It will also keep you from making embarrassing mistakes like wanting to make a custom artefact bow out of rock because you didn't realize bows need to bend in order to function (you know who you are, and one day I will forgive you). Know what you're talking about before you write it down and submit it.

 

2. Look at the game world around you. There is a glorious amount of detail in the environments and NPCs of Achaea. If you want to use a certain material, even one that definitely exists somewhere in Achaea, see if you can find a specific place to source it from and a way to make the source clear in your descriptions (usually examined, but occasionally it works in short descriptions). It adds great flavor and can also help firm up the look of a design by binding you to the specific visual characteristics of the source material. A recent example from my own designs would be the sealskin cloak I made for someone on commission. I went looking for seal denizens and found some in Kamleikan. In addition to referencing Kamleikan in the description, those specific seal denizens provided the cloak's color (greyish brown) and let me identify the specific type of seal now adorning my customer's shoulders (harp seal).

 

3. Edit for flow. Go beyond proofreading. After you're done writing out your short, long, and dropped descriptions, take at least an hour break before you come back to the design, then read it carefully from start to finish-- preferably out loud. Look for places where the flow of the design stumbles, then fix them.

 

4. Make sure your short and long descriptions match and are internally consistent. Look especially carefully at the adjectives you use. For each one, seek out at least one other piece of the description that the adjective could describe, and any piece of the description the adjective could conflict with. If you end up with zero results of the former kind or more than zero of the latter, get rid of the adjective.

 

5. Eliminate repetition and filler. Ask yourself why, exactly, you need each word or phrase. Then ask yourself again, harder. Edit ruthlessly, because hardly anyone is as ruthless about their own writing as they think (including me). Not only will this produce a sleeker, more readable design, but the less space you spend describing any one particular aspect of the item, the more space you can devote to some other detail without lengthening the description.

Jiraishin

THINGS TO AVOID

1. Cliches. This is fairly self-explanatory , but I still recommend rereading your designs before you submit to get rid of lazy writing. I've definitely been guilty of using clichés unthinkingly. They are, as Terry Pratchett once put it, the hammers in the toolbox of language. Please avoid hitting people over the head if you don't absolutely have to.

 

2. Overused descriptors. This requires a bit more explanation than #1.

For whatever reason, there are a few words and phrases that crop up in Achaean design over and over and over again. I'd give the dubious award for "absolute most overused" to 'subtle elegance'/'subtly elegant', with 'stygian' taking second place (especially in Mhaldorian designs, oh my god) and 'sanguine' bringing up third. There's a frigging BRIDGE in Targossas that has 'subtle elegance' in its description. And yes, I've been guilty of using the phrase too, more than once. These days I make a conscious effort to avoid it.

 

'Elegance' is also overused, but used sparingly it's a useful descriptor. If something is 'subtly elegant', I strongly recommend you drop 'subtly'. For 'stygian' and 'sanguine', switch in basically any other synonym for 'dark' and 'red', respectively... or consider just using 'dark' and 'red'.

 

3. Calling things 'simple' or 'subtle' when they aren't. This is a pet peeve of mine. I know there is an element of subjectivity here, but if you have a piece of silk with a detailed scene embroidered on it in purple and gold, it is neither simple nor subtle. Think carefully about the adjectives you use and if they actually fit the item you're describing.

 

4. Overused materials: If you are creating a custom artefact, I strongly recommend using a material other than mithril, and I especially recommend against making your item primarily from mithril. For a supposedly rare, magical metal there is a ridiculous amount of it in circulation.

 

Mhaldorian tailors: I know mhun-skin is traditional, but there's such a large number of player and admin created mhun-skin items that new ones seem like overkill. If I were still Mhaldorian, I'd strongly consider skinning Achilles' decapitated corpse next time he got killed on the Isle and making some classy xoran-leather handbags for a change. Like alligator, but sapient!

 

Tailors of all allegiances: not everything has to be silk. It's a wonderful material and I both like designing with it in game and wish I could afford it in real life, but not consider mixing it up sometimes. And yes, nearly all of my earliest tailoring designs were silk. I'm not proud of it but here we are.

 

On a related note, if you -do- craft something from silk, there's already lot of spider silk in Achaea. Silkworms need some love too.  Also, a puzzling amount of said spider silk looks and behaves exactly like traditional silk except with more words like 'gossamer' attached. Which brings me to my next Thing to Avoid...

 

5. Describing things you are ignorant about. This took me a couple years of designing to figure out (probably longer than it should have), but research is key. Achaea gives us lots of chances to create beautiful things that are too expensive, exotic, or both to figure into our real lives. But unless those items just don't exist in real life, it's on the designer to make sure the descriptions are accurate.

 

For context, here's a bit of story-time. My wake-up call was when I was designing a suit jacket for someone on commission. I wanted to use a blend of cashmere and silk, mainly because -everything- in Achaea seemed to be silk and I was both enamored and bored with it. I wrote up a draft description based on what I thought this material looked and felt like. By pure chance, I was on vacation at the time in a city where one of the tourist attractions was a silk district. I took a notebook with me to go see it, and one of the silk weavers generously let me take notes on her material. She even pointed out different fabrics to me, including a cashmere/silk blend, and let me feel samples.

 

My concept of what that fabric looked and felt like was completely wrong. I scrapped most of my description and started again. If I'd kept the original description, it almost certainly would've gotten approved. I'm pretty sure the Garden has better things to do than look up the texture of specific fabric blends. But it would have been a far inferior product.

 

If you just -can't- find sufficient information on a specific material or style, consider using something different that you can find information on.

Jiraishin

6. Purple prose. There are a very few people who can make flowery language work. I remember when Anarwaen was active, I used to go lurk in her shop just so I could look at all her utterly gorgeous tailoring work and sigh with envy. Considering Jiraishin is a male Serpent and about half of Anarwaen's stock seemed to be ladies' underwear I'm probably really lucky this never landed me in trouble, but yeah. Most people, however, are not Anarwaen. I'm certainly not. Being evocative is good: the right word flow and turn of phrase can help make up for the item being text on a screen rather than something people see in front of them. But the fancier and more poetic you get in your writing, the more likely are to veer into ridiculousness. Also, it's important to remember that you are writing to convey the look, feel, and nature of an item to other people, not to show off your vocabulary.

 

7. Passive voice. I am legitimately terrible about this. It's one of the ongoing criticisms of my work, and I don't have any advice on how to avoid it: in fact, if someone could give me some I'd appreciate it. It is, however, still a problem even if I don't know how to fix it.

 

8. Waffling. Sometimes phrasing like "the general feel of this [item]" or "this [item] appears to be" or even "[thing] seems" can be useful. Sometimes. The overwhelming majority of the time, however, you should hunt down and destroy wording like that. It's timid, it takes up space, it tells rather than shows, and it doesn't tell much. It also destroys the flow of a description. If you must use the above or similar phrases, make sure you use no more than one per examined description (and seriously, aim for zero). Be warned the Crafting Council's approval process will not save you from yourself even if you craft entire sentences out of such vagueness.

 

9. Excessively long short descriptions. The shorter, the sweeter. In real life, even glancing at an item (unless you are vision-impaired, in which case I would sub in "even touching an item briefly") provides a wealth of sensory information. You cannot duplicate this in a short description, and should not try.  A well-worded short description is arguably the most important part of a design: it's the only aspect of an item most people will see, and there's little incentive for them to examine an item more closely if the short description is unpleasing.  Trying to cram in too much information, even if all of it seems important and all of it would be immediately visible at a real-world glance, will make your item look clunky when worn or wielded.

 

Pare the description down as far as you can without losing the essential nature of the item, then do your utmost to pare it down even more. As an old professor of mine liked to say, "You must edit your work ruthlessly because it will be read even more ruthlessly."

 

10. Excessively long examined descriptions. You don't need to be as severe here as with short descriptions, but avoid off-putting walls of text. Don't make someone regret examining the item you designed.

 

Avoiding filler words is necessary but not enough: As with #8, remember that in real life we assimilate a lot of sensory information simultaneously, while in Achaea things are taken in sequentially.  You have your reader's attention for a limited amount of time. In some ways, your job is to evoke as much as describe: use broad strokes for most of the description, then strategically draw your reader's eye in to the details that make this item special.

 

11. Repetitive wording. Make a strong effort not to use the same adjective more than once in a description, and not to use the same noun more than twice at opposite ends. Make a stronger effort to avoid using the same noun or adjective in consecutive sentences.  Absolutely, positively avoid using the same noun or adjective in the same sentence.

Lenn

If you're describing inanimate objects, I think you should just accept passive voice makes sense.

This isn't to say you should overuse it, but I think a number of your points could be tl;dr down to "don't overuse things."

Riell

Ugh.

A filthy heathen just inspired me to finally do my custom weapons.

It's okay, I'll just have to kill you with them.

Halos

Jiraishin said:

3. Calling things 'simple' or 'subtle' when they aren't. This is a pet peeve of mine. I know there is an element of subjectivity here, but if you have a piece of silk with a detailed scene embroidered on it in purple and gold, it is neither simple nor subtle. Think carefully about the adjectives you use and if they actually fit the item you're describing.

YES YES YES

Also anything trying very hard to be two opposite descriptors at once. 

Aralaya

Halos said:

Jiraishin said:

3. Calling things 'simple' or 'subtle' when they aren't. This is a pet peeve of mine. I know there is an element of subjectivity here, but if you have a piece of silk with a detailed scene embroidered on it in purple and gold, it is neither simple nor subtle. Think carefully about the adjectives you use and if they actually fit the item you're describing.

YES YES YES

Also anything trying very hard to be two opposite descriptors at once. 

I don’t recall where I saw it, but it was soft obsidian... obsidian is a rock, it’s not soft.

Vastar

This thread contains useful information that in My consideration warrants an announcement, and so it shall have it.

[Deleted User]

Aralaya said:

I don’t recall where I saw it, but it was soft obsidian... obsidian is a rock, it’s not soft.

Obsidian is soft, though... Are you just taking the fact it's formed from rock, and leaving it as that? Because compared to other rocks, it very much is soft. It's also not technically a rock. It's volcanic glass.

Jiraishin

Aralaya said:

Halos said:

Jiraishin said:

3. Calling things 'simple' or 'subtle' when they aren't. This is a pet peeve of mine. I know there is an element of subjectivity here, but if you have a piece of silk with a detailed scene embroidered on it in purple and gold, it is neither simple nor subtle. Think carefully about the adjectives you use and if they actually fit the item you're describing.

YES YES YES

Also anything trying very hard to be two opposite descriptors at once. 

I don’t recall where I saw it, but it was soft obsidian... obsidian is a rock, it’s not soft.

There are actually soft rocks . 
Obsidian is not one of them.
@Pyori, obsidian takes a sharper edge than steel (though it is also more brittle).This is why it's still used to tip some modern scalpels. 

Aralaya

Obsidian ranks at 5 on the Mohs Scale of Mineral Hardness.
Steel is a 4.5.

[Deleted User]

Jiraishin said:

@Pyori, obsidian takes a sharper edge than steel (though it is also more brittle).This is why it's still used to tip some modern scalpels. 

I'm aware of its capabilities.

I also said compared to other rocks it is, indeed, soft. It's a 5 on Moh's scale, which goes up to 10. There's a lot of things that it's softer than, hence 'comparatively'. Harder than steel, sure, it can be... But so can a lot of things.

It's still not technically a rock, though.

Jiraishin

@pyori I don't want to get into an argument, but if a substance is harder than steel "softer than" may be accurate but "soft" should be reconsidered. 

[Deleted User]

Jiraishin said:

@pyori I don't want to get into an argument, but if a substance is harder than steel "softer than" may be accurate but "soft" should be reconsidered. 

I didn't say at a baseline it's soft. I said compared to others, it is. Read the rest of what I said, and not just the first four words.

Jiraishin

... I did. They don't cancel out the first four words  

Torinn

@Pyori saying "Obsidian is soft, though... " Is wrong then, by your own admission.  Don't say things that you don't mean, unless you're intentionally trying to be contrary (which you are obviously).  Can we get all these deleted cuz this thread is too good for these comments.

Laedha

Instead of suggesting students look for passive voice specifically, I have them look for all helping verbs and see which ones they can substitute. Helping verbs are easy to identify and students end up with clearer and more concise writing. In achaean crafting, people find more interesting verbs when they stop using boring phrases like "is formed" and "has been sewn."   

I don't think passive voice is 100% terrible, avoid at all costs, it's just usually not the best construction.  

Melodie

The 'avoid passive voice at all cost' is actually good advice, as the admin don't allow it for higher-grade descriptions - most notably, room descriptions in the real world. Back when I was working on the Lumeni chapel for Cyrene, I worked directly with Phaestus, who knocked that habit out of me hard (though it took a while). It's creeped up a little in recent times since I'm occasionally lazy, but if you intend to continue designing in Achaea for a long time, it's better (and easier) to kick the habit as soon as possible.

Torinn

Accuracy is key unless you're okay with people misconstruing what you mean.  Saying "soft obsidian" goes against conventional wisdom, so needs explanation.  An accurate statement would be to compare it directly to another, or qualify it.

Dupre

You're missing

Know your UK English ahead of time.

Jiraishin

Dupre said:

You're missing

Know your UK English ahead of time.

That actually falls under "things that will keep your design from being approved", which is outside the scope of this thread. 

Minifie

The harder a metal, the more difficult it is to refine to a state of usability. Diamond swords would be a fucking nightmare to make, while obsidian and steel are hard enough to retain a solid form while soft enough to mold nicely to the form you want. You’d not have soft obsidian as a blade, but a fiery globe containing softened obsidian isn’t out of the realm of possibility. 

Of course, what we should probably disect more is alloys, since combination of metals will yield something a frightfully load more durable than pure metals, and still, “soft/hard” only applies when considering the state it is in, I’d rather see a soft obsidian item than a sword of chromium, because chromium be brittle, yo!

Sena

Minifie said:

a fiery globe containing softened obsidian isn’t out of the realm of possibility.

The word there would be "melted", not "softened". Heating it up until it's no longer solid is the only way you're going to get obsidian that could be called soft.

Minifie

Sena said:

Minifie said:

a fiery globe containing softened obsidian isn’t out of the realm of possibility.

The word there would be "melted", not "softened". Heating it up until it's no longer solid is the only way you're going to get obsidian that could be called soft.

Well, yes, but you can use soft in descriptors with melted obsidian, but my greater point was that’s somewhere I could see “soft obsidian” being ok, not in weapons or left at outside temperature.

Aralaya

Minifie said:

Sena said:

Minifie said:

a fiery globe containing softened obsidian isn’t out of the realm of possibility.

The word there would be "melted", not "softened". Heating it up until it's no longer solid is the only way you're going to get obsidian that could be called soft.

Well, yes, but you can use soft in descriptors with melted obsidian, but my greater point was that’s somewhere I could see “soft obsidian” being ok, not in weapons or left at outside temperature.

Yes but when it’s soft, it’s lava... so.

[Deleted User]

Minifie said:

The harder a metal, the more difficult it is to refine to a state of usability. Diamond swords would be a fucking nightmare to make, while obsidian and steel are hard enough to retain a solid form while soft enough to mold nicely to the form you want. You’d not have soft obsidian as a blade, but a fiery globe containing softened obsidian isn’t out of the realm of possibility.

Neither diamond, nor obsidian, are metals. Forging doesn't apply to them. Melting obsidian just turns it into molten glass, and melting diamond just vaporises it. Although diamond has a melting point that's ~3x steel. So GL with that.

This guy did a good video on it, actually.

Minifie

Pyori said:

Minifie said:

The harder a metal, the more difficult it is to refine to a state of usability. Diamond swords would be a fucking nightmare to make, while obsidian and steel are hard enough to retain a solid form while soft enough to mold nicely to the form you want. You’d not have soft obsidian as a blade, but a fiery globe containing softened obsidian isn’t out of the realm of possibility.

Neither diamond, nor obsidian, are metals. Forging doesn't apply to them. Melting obsidian just turns it into molten glass, and melting diamond just vaporises it. Although diamond has a melting point that's ~3x steel. So GL with that.

This guy did a good video on it, actually.

I mean, that’s also for suspension of reality in a game if people wanted to use it. Actual obsidian isn’t going to give you a weapon, but in a game with glass swords and shields that don’t break I assumed it would be fine. I’ll watch the video though when I’m not on my phone though, afaik you can’t use glass in alloys anyway.

Lenn

Why's he so much better at smelting than I am?!

Aralaya

Obsidian has been used for weapons historically, just not cast obsidian.

[Deleted User]

Minifie said:

Actual obsidian isn’t going to give you a weapon

Uh. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macuahuitl Probably one of the most dangerous close-combat weapons were made from obsidian. My point wasn't about making weapons out of it, it's that you don't forge weapons out of it. You knap it.

Spears, knives, arrowhead have all been made from it as well. As Jir said, it can get incredibly sharp. But it's also brittle and obviously not meant to be used for cutting trees down etc.